


Promises You Will, Will Not

by Cosmicobit



Series: The Ghosts of Green and Grey [2]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M, TW for blood and medical gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 16:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9829238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmicobit/pseuds/Cosmicobit
Summary: Locus helps Emily patch up an injury to her shoulder in the midst of the civil war, and their brief affair.





	

So often, she was the one to patch him up. But who watches the watchmen? Who heals the doctor? Locus would not have expected it to be him.

Nevertheless, he finds himself serving as her hands as she tends to a cut across her right shoulder blade, an ugly red marring of her sun-deprived skin. The handiwork of a stray chunk of shrapnel from a window that is no more, now, the wound is clean but beyond her reach, and she is far too secure in herself to have anyone else work over a wound for her. Locus is merely a tool she directs as he cleans and she winces and grumbles and chatters. With her left hand, she holds a hand mirror over her shoulder. Curled up in the sink like a cat, knees splayed to allow room for the faucet—she is such a tiny thing—she uses this mirror’s reflection in the larger bathroom mirror in front of her to direct him.

It’s a long time they go without him speaking. She does so enough for both, and she has little interest in small talk at the moment besides. She’s too preoccupied instructing him in peeling her skin open, turning the slender gash into a hungry, red-welling mouth she inspects for broken glass via a medical scanner he wields for her, and removes with a pair of forceps pinched between Locus’ fingers. His gloves have bloody fingertips. In the mirror, her face is pale and the set of her jaw is hard as he plies the wound open and moves past skin and broken muscle to dig shards from her body. The blood reaches as high as his knuckles within moments.

He realizes that he should say something— _what_ is unclear. _This shouldn’t have happened to you,_ isn’t appropriate, nor safe. It would require him to explain himself and the fact that he should have known which side of the building the blow would come to, should have known not to leave so precious and reliable an asset as Emily Grey to be anywhere near the blast. The sentiment is so genuine, however, it feels almost a travesty to ignore it completely.

“You should have been wearing your armor,” he allows himself instead. _That would have kept you safe._

“I was wearing the undersuit,” she huffs. Speaking brings no color back into her pallid cheeks, but it consoles him that she isn’t descending into shock. She shouldn’t be—she’s dragged a blanket across her lap that she holds in front of her chest, albeit weakly. It’s not her bare breasts that are the concern, of course, he has seen them no insignificant number of times. Seen, and other things. It’s her warmth she’s mindful of. She knows emergency care, whether she is the patient, or someone else.

“Besides, a bombing in the middle of the day in an _Armonia hospital—_ a civilian hospital! And to think they wonder why we fight them. I do believe the casualty count was no fewer than forty, including myself and that nasty bruise to be on your ribs. _That’s_ going to hurt in the morning.”

Her tone is as airily cheerful as ever, defiant in the face of gore. His respect for that defiance, he finds, is not what it usually is just now, however. His ribs are indeed aching with every movement of his arm and she, _she_ is bleeding so profusely now he’s gone digging through her shoulder that it’s disturbing. So small a body doesn’t seem capable of holding so much red running life.

She winces minutely as he prods—as tenderly as one can—through the slash in her body again. Blood is running in a slow rivulet down her back. He can see her eyes following it in the mirror.

“Go ahead and wipe it down with the analgesic wipes in the _right_ hand corner of the kit. And get that blood, too! Unless you want to clean off my counter—no need to make a mess!”

Locus grunts an affirmation.

She shivers as the cool antiseptic wipe comes down on her, firmly, with intent to clean much deeper than the skin alone, before the numbness takes over. It’s not strong, and by the time they arrive at stitches she’ll be tender again, but it’s enough to take some of the tension out of her shoulders.

“You can’t be too careful,” he says as he traces the trickle of blood down her back. It doesn’t belong on skin so clean and well cared for. There are few and far between phantom scars on her, here and there, but she knows too well how to treat herself for her escapades in fields both scientific and belligerent to have left significant marks. It’s with a distant and disconcerting sort of sadness that he wonders if his work here will leave a mark on her or not.

“Apparently not. But we’d all lose are minds if we were in are armor _all_ the time! Even _you_ sneak out of it when you think no one is looking.” Or when she’s the one looking. She doesn’t say that aloud, a little too tired and a little too hurt for innuendo, though it hangs unspoken between them and sparks each time his skin brushes hers. Above his glove a sliver of wrist stands out dark against the backdrop of her flesh and her blood. It meets her skin to skin when he rests his arm against her for stability. She’s still pale, but not cold.

“Out of necessity only,” he retorts. _Necessity and you._ Though those two things do sometimes feel dangerously near to being one and the same. _Watch yourself, soldier._

Emily rolls her good shoulder, setting down her hand mirror for a moment, while he disposes of the wipes and his bloody gloves. He replaces them while she sighs at her reflection.

She looks tired.

She always looks tired.

Circles so often linger below her eyes, as dark as her curls. They spring free from her braid like a macabre halo around her face. He wonders, sometimes, if it’s the war or the manic energy she expends in surviving it that exhausts her so.

“All right,” she breathes, barely words. “Stitches time! You did say you understand two layer suturing? This is the part I _really_ can’t do myself. Can I count on you, Locus?”

What a horrid question. What a bitter lie.

“Of course.”

Emily beams at him in the mirror. How someone so _tired_ can look so _bright_ he cannot fathom. She is, so often, so far from his grasp. So removed from his understanding. She’s like a star out a viewport window, too far away to triangulate through observation alone, but too brilliant to overlook, as if she were closer than she really is; she is, in so many ways, untouchable. Even with her flesh pulling like unhappy fabric against the thread he draws through it—motion that drains all the color from her face again, that pulls a little more unclotted blood to the surface with every other pull—she seems for a moment out of reach completely.

“Tighter on the inner layer,” she chastises him. A surgeon trusting his unstable hands—yes, she is a star. Far too big and bright and beyond for him.

He yanks the suture gently taught.

Locus understands that this is an exercise in trust, that she would use his hands as her own. He endeavors not to think about it as he repairs her, stitch by stitch, moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat, with her blood once again on his hands.


End file.
